Speech and Language Fun for the Holidays–and All Year Round!

Well, it’s the holidays–time off from school and a break from the usual routine. This usually means no speech-language therapy sessions for your child until early or mid January. Yikes! That’s quite a while between sessions. What if he or she starts to “slide” a little in their skills? Well, never fear! There are many fun-filled activities you and your child can do that will keep their speech-language skills cooking. I’ll divide them into “speech” and “language” categories, but an activity in one category may be also be perfectly suitable for the other. Here we go!

Speech Activities

You know the drill. Your child’s speech-language pathologist gives you homework targeting whatever speech sound(s) they are targeting in therapy. Well, you can continue working on the sound during the holiday and have a great time. Here are just a few ideas:

Go Fish (use pictures containing the target sound)

Memory Game: Name the matches that you get

Fishing Game: Make a fishing pole with a craft stick, string and magnet. Attach paper clips to pictures, “fish” for them and have your child name them

Jenga: Every time you child pulls out a Jenga piece, he/she must say a target word

Bowling: Tape pictures to the bowling pins and say them as they are knocked down

Treasure Hunt: Hide pictures or objects containing the sound and then search for them

Tape a word to your back and have your child guess what it is (also great for word finding)

Make a holiday collage with pictures containing the sound

Calendar: Write a new word on the calendar every day and try to use that word as much as possible all day long

Take a walk: Go for a walk with your child and look for objects that start with the sound. Whoever finds the most wins!

Practice good speech during specific times of day. Mealtimes work especially well!

Tongue Twisters

And these are just a few! But wait–now it’s time to move on to:

Language Activities

There are many terrific games for auditory processing, sequencing, expressive language, vocabulary, word finding and social skills that can be played by the whole family. While you’re sitting in front of a roaring fire drinking hot cocoa, you can have a great time playing any one of these:

You can also read and tell stories. This is a fabulous way to spend time together and strengthen language skills at the same time. When reading, you can let your kids:

predict the character’s actions

describe the pictures using nouns, verbs and adjectives

retell the story (great for recall and verbal sequencing)

And don’t forget apps. There are so many for speech and language that I can’t list them all here (that will be another blog post). In the meantime, you can just go to itunes or the Google Play store and do a search for “speech language therapy”. You won’t believe how many you’ll find.

Of course, the ultimate goal is not just to make your child a better speaker or listener, but to ENJOY the time spent with him or her. I hope some of these ideas will make the rest of your holiday (and your year) brighter. And please, if you have any activities and ideas you would like to add, please post them. I’d love to hear from you!

About Monica Lowy

Bodylink Speech Therapy is a private speech therapy practice founded by Monica Lowy, M.A., CCC-SLP, TSHH, APP. Ms. Lowy earned a master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology at New York University in 1996 and has been a New York State licensed clinician for 16 years. Learn More »

I was recently interviewed for Viktor Nagornyy's "Thrive to Serve" podcast. Take a listen and learn a little about the inner workings of Bodylink Speech Therapy! https://www.projectarmy.net/episode-2-monica-lowy/

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Client Testimonial

I can’t speak highly enough of Monica and Bodylink Speech Therapy! Working with her has been a life changing experience. She is an excellent speech therapist, an all around wonderful person, and whatever your goal or need is, she will help you get there. As a singer and performer it was important to me to find a speech pathologist who fully understood my needs in this area and had a similar background. I received all of that and more from Monica. I also love her holistic approach. Lauren M.Brooklyn, NY

About Us

Bodylink Speech Therapy is a private speech therapy practice founded by Monica Lowy, M.A., CCC-SLP, TSHH, APP. Ms. Lowy earned a master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology at New York University in 1996 and has been a New York State licensed clinician for 20 years.